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===Vowels===
===Vowels===
Common has a six vowel system, with the classic five vowels plus schwa. The vowel system shows a high/low symmetry, which was an intentional feature in the design of the language. In the language's pseudo-history, explained in some of the writings of the language's creator, Peter K. Davidson, there was a phase where a high-low vowel harmony was an important feature of the language's phonology. This pattern can be seen in some of the language's older words, coined closer to the language's original creation, and was actually important to the grammatical feature of gender, which was lost relatively early in the language's history of real world use. Vowel harmony is not important to the language today, but due to that existing pattern, that speakers pick up on, it continues to have echoes in slang and in new coinings.
{| border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" class="bluetable lightbluebg" style="width: 255px; text-align:center;"
! style="width: 90px; "|
! style="width: 55px; " |Front
! style="width: 55px; " |Mid
! style="width: 55px; " |Back
|-
! style="" |High
| i
|
| u
|-
! style="" |Mid
| ɪ 
| ə
| ʊ
|-
! style="" |Low
|
| a
|
|}
Common also has two diphthongs, [ai] and [au]. In some dialects with a strong English substratum influence, these are realized as [aɪ] and [aʊ] for many speakers, but for careful speakers of High Common, end noticeably higher than the similar English diphthongs do. They are written in phonemic transcription as /aj/ and /aw/. A diphthong is pronounced approximately the same length of time as a pure vowel. Vowels do not have a length distinction. This vowel system resembles that of Malay or Indonesian.
The central vowel schwa, /ə/, is the least stable element of this system. It is prone to being reduced or deleted in casual speech in unstressed syllables. It can occur in stressed syllables, where in many dialects it has a tendency to pull front or back between [ø] or [ʌ] depending on the place of articulation of any preceding consonant, or to favor some kind of consistent shift. In High Common, /ə/ is pronounced carefully and consistently, especially in stressed syllables.


===Orthography===
===Orthography===
Common is written in a variant of the Latin alphabet. It uses the following letters natively:
a, c, e, f, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, w, x, y, z
It omits the following letters:
b, d, g, q, v
Thus, Common uses a 21 letter alphabet. The Common writing system tends to be a very good phonemic representation of Common pronunciation, but does not capture any of the rules of allophony. The other five letters, however, are part of the official Common alphabet and are actually used, although increasingly rarely. They exist for historical reasons, because the first keyboards used by writers of Common had these letters, and because Common writers routinely employed some loanwords without adjusting their spelling to the rules of Common.
Even today, some loanwords may have these letters, and they introduce an element of chaos into Common spelling. The best, encouraged style today is to "Commonise" such borrowings to use the closest approximation using the 21 official letters, but a significant number of official, proper spellings using these letters still exist, and as well they are common in personal and place names. The general strategy that Common speakers use to handle such a letter if it appears is to treat it the same as the letter it's most similar to, so to treat d as the same as t, for example, but this is complicated by many factors, such as preservation of irregularities found in the source language, and the fact that many speakers actually can distinguish and pronounce the voiceless/voiced distinction, and do so deliberately, to show off their erudition, or because they are already a speaker of the source language or another, similar language.
The alphabetical order, including the non-standard letters is the same as English. This came about because of the early influence of English on the development of the language - the language's creator was an Anglophone, the ''Hillbillies'' TV itself was an American show, the show's first audience was Anglophone, and the first published materials for the language were written in English. Table 5 summarizes the alphabet and how the letters are used. Non-standard letters and the basic repair strategy used if they are encountered are included, in italics.
{| border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" style="width:500px"
|+<strong>Table 5:</strong> The Common Alphabet
! ead |
|-
! scope="col" | Letter
! scope="col" | Name
! scope="col" | Phoneme
! scope="col" | Allophones</thead><tbody>
|-
| A, a
| style="text-align:center" | a
| /a/
| [a]
|-
| <em>B, b</em>
| style="text-align:center" | ype
| <em>Nonstandard</em>
| <em>Same as p</em>
|-
| C, c
| style="text-align:center" | ce
| /t͡ʃ/
| [t͡ʃ], [d͡ʒ]
|-
| <em>D, d</em>
| style="text-align:center" | yte
| <em>Nonstandard</em>
| <em>Same as t</em>
|-
| E, e
| style="text-align:center" | e
| /e/
| [e]
|-
| F, f
| style="text-align:center" | fe
| /f/
| [f], [v]
|-
| <em>G, g</em>
| style="text-align:center" | yke
| <em>Nonstandard</em>
| <em>Same as k, but may also be used as a silent letter to trigger /n/ to be read as [ŋ] in exotic loanwords.</em>
|-
| H, h
| style="text-align:center" | ahe
| /h/
| [ç], [x], [h]
|-
| I, i
| style="text-align:center" | i
| /i/
| [i]
|-
| J. j
| style="text-align:center" | ja
| /j/
| [j]
|-
| K, k
| style="text-align:center" | ke
| /k/
| [k], [g]
|-
| L, l
| style="text-align:center" | le
| /l/
| [l]
|-
| M, m
| style="text-align:center" | me
| /m/
| [m], [n]
|-
| N, n
| style="text-align:center" | ne
| /n/
| [n], [m], [ɲ], [ŋ]
|-
| O, o
| style="text-align:center" | o
| /o/
| [o]
|-
| P, p
| style="text-align:center" | pe
| /p/
| [p], [b]
|-
| <em>Q, q</em>
| style="text-align:center" | akwa
| <em>Nonstandard</em>
| <em>[kw] or [gw] if spelled qu, otherwise same as k</em>
|-
| R, r
| style="text-align:center" | re
| /r/
| [r]
|-
| S, s
| style="text-align:center" | se
| /s/
| [s]. [z]
|-
| T, t
| style="text-align:center" | te
| /t/
| [t], [d]
|-
| U, u
| style="text-align:center" | u
| /u/
| [u]
|-
| <em>V, v</em>
| style="text-align:center" | yfe
| <em>Nonstandard</em>
| <em>Same as f</em>
|-
| W, w
| style="text-align:center" | we
| /w/
| [w]
|-
| X, x
| style="text-align:center" | xe
| /ʃ/
| [ʃ], [ʒ]
|-
| Y, y
| style="text-align:center" | hyn
| /ə/
| [ə]
|-
| Z, z
| style="text-align:center" | ze
| /θ/
| [θ], [ð]</tbody>
|}


===Phonotactics===
===Phonotactics===
Trafalgar
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